“We then started straight across the hills for the mouth of the Big Cheyenne, some forty miles distant. It was very important to get there early the next day, lest we be cut off by the Indians. We ran a good deal of the way, but such was the severity of the weather that we almost froze. The thermometer must have reached thirty degrees below zero. On the open hills the cold was terrible, and the side of my body next to the wind became thoroughly numbed. The journey was not without decided interest, however, for we were treated to one of the most beautiful displays of the Aurora Borealis that I have ever seen.
“We reached the mouth of the Big Cheyenne a little after sunrise, and I immediately got breakfast and set out for Pierre, where I arrived about nightfall. When I reached the fort the agent could hardly believe his eyes. ‘What! are you back already?’ he said. ‘I hardly thought you would succeed in turning those goods over.’ I replied that I too was astonished that I had got out of that scrape uninjured. ‘How did you manage it?’ he asked. ‘I took Zephyr along with me.’ ‘Why, how could Bouis spare him?’ ‘By your order. Didn’t you authorize me to take him?’ ‘No, I never gave any such authority,’ said the agent, as he turned away in anger that he had been so completely outwitted.
“The next day the agent detailed James Kipp, with three or four men and a dozen Indians, to go with me to Lookout and receive the goods at that point. The Indians were wholly unnecessary, and I can explain their being sent only on the theory that the agent had not yet given up the short cut for destroying this new opposition. But Kipp was a different sort of man, and although he was sometimes compelled to do the bidding of others to save himself, he never approved of such desperate measures.
“When we set out Kipp was on horseback and I on foot, and he said, ‘Well, let’s see who will get to Lookout first.’ Bercier and I were the only ones who reached there that night, but I was so badly used up that it was several days before I could walk naturally. Kipp did not get in for two days. The rest of the property was then turned over and the ugly business brought to a close.”
Such was Captain La Barge’s first experience in opposing the American Fur Company; and if it resulted in a quick collapse the profitable termination to himself, and the extreme opposition of the company, showed that they did not regard his enterprise with an easy eye. The whole affair made them set a higher value on La Barge’s services and treat his opinions and rights thereafter with more consideration.